The study on the people’s perception towards patriotism, conducted from Aug 24 to 28, examined the level of enthusiasm towards National Day celebrations and the impact of such festivities on them as citizens.
The majority of respondents (75.5%) said they were proud to be Malaysian, compared to 13% who said they were not.
This marked a decline from previous years, with 98.3% proud of being Malaysian in 2017 and 95.3% in 2016.
Slightly over 67% of respondents said they celebrated National Day every year while 15.2% said they did not.
This too was a decline from last year where 80.2% said they celebrated Malaysia’s independence day.
When asked whether National Day meant anything to them, 71% of respondents said the day was meaningful while 11.5% said it was not.
Last year, 81.8% of participants said National Day was meaningful while 5.3% said it was not and 12.9% were neutral.
Seven in 10 respondents said they were aware of this year’s National Day theme, “Sayangi Malaysiaku” while 29.5% were unaware.
Just under 70% of respondents said they were planning to wave the Jalur Gemilang to celebrate independence day while about 20% said they would not.
The study was conducted across all 222 parliamentary constituencies with the selection of respondents proportional to the population in each area.
In terms of numbers, 1,007 respondents were involved, 70.9% male and 29.1% female.
The majority of participants (37.2%) were between 30 and 49 years of age, followed by those between 40 and 49 (35.5%).
Just over half of them (52.3%) were Malay, followed by the Chinese (29.7%), Indians (7.6%), Sabah Bumiputeras (4.7%), Sarawak Bumiputeras (4.4%), Orang Asli (0.5%) and others (0.8%).
In terms of state representation, Selangor had the most participants (15.3%), followed by Johor (12%) and Perak (10.5%).